The effects of a good lunch are quite evident- All Smiles! Guruji Shrii Arnav and the legendary Richard W Hughes the author of the classic "Ruby & Sapphire"

The journey of a Gem is fascinating. For most people it is… Gem is mined, sent for cutting and polishing and then comes into the market for selling. Seems quite simple but not usually so!.

It might be just one of the cases but in many cases gem or rather gems travel through forests, mountains, passing through hands of militia or similar sounding creatures or statesmen …intimidating and influential power centres… depending on the way you look at it.

A gem may find itself in a night club or a world’s financial centre or an auction house or in a nondescript house in a village or the sanctum sanctorum of a temple! And in these travels the gem involves and interfaces with complex people, situations and characters. Gems have such a value and power that is capable of changing governments and power structures.

To get that elusive gemstone you might end up in the world’s hottest place, or one of the world’s coldest mountains, in a corporate boardroom, a seedy night club or a small tea stall in a village depending on your sense of adventure or the feverish obsession to obtain it. There are gems that are used as collateral’s to secure loans to execute large scale projects like building a national highway or a bridge. The fascination with whys, how’s and wherefores in the gem business is never ending.

In the year 1998, I read a book that changed my life. That book was Ruby & Sapphire by Richard W Hughes . It had a huge impact on my life, and the way I started looking at gems changed radically. I was deeply influenced by the legend who had penned the book- Richard W Hughes . If you are a gem aficionado and aspire to be a real Gemmologist – Ruby & Sapphire is a must for you. Richard W Hughes is one such adventurer with a formidable knowledge backed by experience and that’s the reason he is an authority in this field and his opinion highly respected.

Ruby & Sapphire is a classic penned by Richard W Hughes

As I searched more about Richard and heard about his adventures I was deeply inspired and aspired to do something that is as game changing as his seminal work – Ruby & Sapphire . The sense of adventure heightened in me and I have traveled to such places and been in such situations in search of that elusive gem that no man even in his wildest dream would want to be in. In retrospect, I still wonder if it was a dream or reality!

Destiny and gems have strange and powerful effects. What has to transpire has already been scripted.

On the eve of Christmas in 2012, I was in a city to appraise one of the world’s most expensive and finest gems. (But of course, details are the absolute god in situations like these, and therefore the details of the gems and places remain undisclosed). After the appraisal was over, I sent over a text message to Richard asking if it would be possible to meet him for a chat. Since the answer was in affirmative, we ended up in a restaurant for lunch. As we enjoyed our lunch over general chit chat the subject of the gem that I had come to appraise and value came up and what followed made me think that this meeting was not just about lunch, or meeting a friend . Richard gave me some information that was exclusive to him about the said Gem and I gave him some information that was exclusive to me. Collectively together we now had information that by the end of the meeting had changed the appraisal value by 3000%.

Later in the day, upon solitary reflection, I gathered that the aim of every war is peace , quite an irony!

So now if you are really wearing a real gem you would appreciate that after mother nature made that glittering miracle over hundreds of millions of years, your gem might have a fascinating story behind it and must have affected and changed several lives before it chose to end up with you. So you are as special as your gem and now you shall shortly have a story of your own to tell.

Guruji Shrii Arnav-Vedic Guru is also an internationally acclaimed planetary gemmologist. An Accredited Jewelry Professional from the Gemmological Institute of America at present he is the chief mentor of Gemstoneuniverse and Astromandir.com. He is also the chief Horoscope columnist of Deccan Herald- A leading Indian English daily.